The beginning: Finley's birth story, part 1

Two of my closest friends and my cousin are all pregnant. They vary from 13 weeks to 28 weeks to 40 weeks and are all in Joburg, which makes me a little sad because I would love to have seen them during this magical time in their lives. It's also made me the teeniest bit envious and enormously broody. Brad insists that if I remember my pregnancy correctly I would never want to be pregnant again. And he does have a point. I've quickly forgotten about the nausea and tiredness of the first trimester and the frequent peeing and sore back of the second trimester. And that uncomfortable beached whale feeling of carrying a full term baby is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when I fantasize about being pregnant. Its all the romantic stuff of seeing that little heart beat for the first time, and feeling the baby's movement growing from light butterfly tickles to all-out Tekken style kick-punch combos that makes me so nostalgic. And in all this nostalgia, I've been thinking a lot about his birth and I've only just now realised that I have never published Fin's birth story before, so here goes.

Part 1

The baby shower was on Saturday and in the end it all went off really well. Hannah, Mo, Ali and Pippa drove down for the weekend and after the shower we all went up to Ballito to spend the night at Pippa's family's flat. The next morning we went for a swim. The water was 'fresh' and I only managed a quick dip in the ocean. The clouds arrived on the scene and even with all Mo's willing and intentions they remained, stubbornly, in front of the warm sun. We then went for breakfast at Gareth and Bonnie's new B&B. I was at the start of my 38th week and as we left and said goodbye little did we know that only a few days later the little Bean would be born.

29 November 2006, Wednesday
By Wednesday night I was feeling quite tired and crampy and the Braxton hicks contractions were coming every six minutes or so. I didn't think anything of it, after all, we were two weeks away from our due date and the contractions weren't getting any more intense or frequent so I just went to bed early.

30 November 2006, 1:00am Thursday morning
I woke up needing to pee. By now, very used to this middle of the night disturbance, I levered my ginormous body out of bed, waddled down the passage and then a minute later, waddled back to bed. Ten minutes later I needed the loo again. Still, at this point, there were no alarm bells ringing in my head and everything seemed perfectly normal. Five minutes later, the same urge, only this time on my way back to our room, I heard/felt a little pop and then a trickle of water run down my legs. I was confused at first ('Has my incontinence become this bad??'), but when the trickled persisted, I immediately woke Brad up with “I think my water's just broken”.

I stood in the bath while Brad sat on the toilet next to me ringing Liza our midwife. We told her what was happening, that the contractions were still very irregular and she advised that I have some chamomile tea and try and get some rest. Yeah, right. You are in labour and you are going to see this precious baby that you have nutured and loved for the last 9 months for the first time and get to hold him and smell him. This life changing event, the moment you have been waiting for has now begun. Now try and get some sleep! Well, in the end I think I managed a couple hours before waking up again.

Brad couldn't resist and smsed his family to let them know what was happening. I didn't want to wake up Hester and Harold (my parents) since they would worry needlessly and them getting a good night's sleep would help me more later in the day anyway.

I remember Hester coming through from her room in the morning and I called to her. She popped her head in our room to ask if we wanted tea and I told her I was in labour and that my water had broken. She couldn't believe how calm I was! She told me that when she was in labour she was alone in a hospital room, terrified, trying to read through a book on how to handle being in labour but she just kept reading the same line over and over again. Harold wasn't even allowed to be in the room with her! In contrast I had my family all around me, I was at home, I felt safe and loved and I just remember feeling so excited.

Part 2 to follow soon...

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